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Books

An invisibility cloak? You might just be able to see it on the horizon...

A review of Invisible: The Dangerous Lure of the Unseen, by Philip Ball. Scientists and occultists held hands in their quest for the invisible

9 August 2014

9:00 AM

9 August 2014

9:00 AM

Invisible Philip Ball

Bodley Head, pp.326, £25, ISBN: 978184792289

The best books by good writers — and Philip Ball is a very good writer indeed — are sometimes the ones that don’t quite work. This brilliant study of how occultists and scientists alike have attempted to see the invisible is very much that kind of fascinating failure.

Its subject is just too large — and, well, it is just too hard to see its edges clearly.

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